


Ice and Snow

by archiekennedy



Series: 2-perspective X-Men series [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-04 06:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2955494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archiekennedy/pseuds/archiekennedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and Charles' different POV growing up, eventually meeting in later chapters. (I promise to come up with a better title!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TW for Charles' section. (non-con is implied and not graphic)

Charles  
There isn’t a light on in the entire house because Mother doesn’t like it when I put on my night light. It sends out shimmery tendrils of blue light across the hall between my bedroom and the kitchen and the bathroom and the closet with the shiny blue door where the maid keeps the linens but it has ghosts that I can hear. So now I step heel-toe along the wood panels because I don’t want to go a step too far and miss the toilet and wake mother or the ghosts in the linen cupboard.  
Perhaps it’s not the dark I am scared of. Maybe it was that blue door. Because once my mother could not find the napkins and our new maid was somewhere else and mother’s new friend Mr. H wished that we could have the white napkins instead of the blue. Mellie our old maid kept the blue napkins in a cabinet in the kitchen because mother liked them better because they matched the walls and I didn’t care for either colour honestly I just liked tucking the stiff fabric into my collar even though mother told me to keep it in my lap. But the day I had to open the blue door we had to use the white napkins. White like the inside of a bathtub because Mr. H liked everything to be clean. He said it was a better idea to have white napkins, because maids were silly and could just use bleach to clean them, you see bleach looks blue when you pour it out but it turns everything white like clean cotton or new snow.  
And he asked me to go to the cabinet by my room to get the napkins because he so liked their white colour and starched corner and light pin-lines just enough to show they were custom made. And Mother said oh that cabinet is by your room, Charles, go fetch them and Mr. H thought I was so lucky to live near the napkin closet because he asked oh young man where do you sleep? You sleep by the napkins. And I told him yes and he followed me because he wanted to see the napkins, all stacked in neat piles along the inside of the closet by my room. And because he so wanted to see me reach up to the top shelf where Mellie kept the best linens even though my shirt came untucked and I stood on my tip toes Mr. H smiled because that was the best thing because every boy should help his mother.  
And he told me look at your shirt it’s come undone and I told him don’t tell mother because it’s not proper here can you help me reach the napkins Mr. H? Oh no he said you’ve got to do it yourself you’re a big boy and so I reached and grabbed them and made sure not to muss the napkins because they were so neatly folded. He tells me I’m a good boy and holds out a piece of chocolate and I reach out to take it but he says no don’t use your hands so I take it with my tongue like a communion wafer only much sweeter and Mr. H tells me I am bad and not to tell my mother. And now I do not go near that closet with the blue door because of the ghosts and the white napkins as sharp as ice.  
Erik  
My English wasn’t very good when we moved. The men at the border spoke German but in Poland you couldn’t be sure what language people spoke and since my father already spoke French and neither of them had time to learn another language and Ruth was still very small the responsibility fell to me. I remember having Dick and Jane books, and my mother wrote “Max” in large blue letters on the inside cover so I wouldn’t lose them.  
The two children had a dog named spot and each volume was composed entirely of monosyllables. The books were second or third-hand and the spines soon fell to pieces like stale bread. Ruth was Jane, I decided. Someday I would get her a dog. She would like a dog. I would get her a spotted dog, just like the one in the book, because someday I would have money and we could stay in a house for years and years.  
But we didn’t stay long after we moved. We had to move to a different part of the city, where ashes and soot blended with the snow in winter and formed hills of silver snow. In my books there were no ashes and in winter when Dick and Jane played the sky was pure white with snow. Ruth and I couldn’t make snowmen. You see, the snow was too high and Ruth would cough whenever we strayed outside. I wasn’t allowed out, either. Because outside people might hurt us. The old house wasn’t safe anymore so that’s why we moved. So my mother said, anyway. And so the police told us. They were new police, you see, with black hats with skulls that stared down at you even when the policemen weren’t looking. The skulls provided an extra pair of eyes.  
So we stayed inside. Colds spread, and flus, and a strange rash that made the sufferer’s skin pucker and peel, and soon more people arrived and everything got worse. We all stayed in one room all day and passed a foul-smelling bucket from room to room, and Ruth would hide her face and hold her nose even though all our neighbors started to smell just like the buckets they brought every day. That winter I thought we would all drown under the smothering blanket of grey snow and the stench of all the humanity.


	2. Ice and Snow: chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik parallel narratives. In each section both characters' powers are made apparent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've blended movie- and comicverse in this series. Age is roughly 11/12 for Charles and 13/14 for Erik. (It's just how the ages worked out if these events are happening at roughly the same time. I realize Ruth's death isn't quite canon...)  
> Bonus: I fixed the names. (I am movie fandom trash and named Magneto's sister Anya, which is actually the name of his ex-wife. Oops. His sister's canon name is Ruth and I have included this edit in all chapters.)

Charles

The driver is out on Wednesday. He went out and I think perhaps my mother has fired him but I cannot know for sure. I miss his blue hat and the scruff of the beard that I so seldom got to see, because I was always forced to sit directly behind him. Father has grey hair but our driver had nice hair, red-brown like burnt grass and soft like feathers. At least so I imagined. I never felt it, and that Wednesday I suddenly realized that I never would. And without the car we would have to take a cab. Mother never liked cabs because Americans were crass and rude and American cabbies are always asking for tips, they don’t know their place, she says.

So we stand on the corner in Westchester and even though we are only a slim blonde woman and a small boy, nobody stops for us. Mother mutters under her breath and says no we cannot be late the doctor must look at the boy’s ears. And I say mother, my ears feel fine today, I’m not hearing anything. And then she says she didn’t say anything at all, and I must get my hearing checked because I am scaring my teachers and it’s not her fault American doctors do not make house calls.

In America the cabs are yellow like the ugly pencils we use at school, or like wasps, patterned black and khaki. None of them stops for us and my mother feels angry that it was the maid’s day off and there was nobody to take me to the doctor and we must wait on the curb like commoners and now we are dangerously close to being late.

We must take the subway, mother thinks and then says. And I have never been and I do not know if mother has been either but the entrance approaches as mother drags me by my elbow to the nearest entrance. It looms up, cave-like, jagged stairs edging down into darkness like a great mouth. And I freeze and mother pulls me once again. And we race down the stairs, mother’s nice tan dress flapping about her knees as the thick air from below pushes its way out. Mother takes out her purse and thrusts them into the token machine which spits out subway tokens onto the floor. I pick them up so that mother does not soil her gloves. She takes the tokens and offers a rare smile, which I cherish as we rush down another flight of stairs.

And as we rush down, the voices appear, slowly at first and then thunderous like a thousand builders all hammering at once. They are all screaming I will be late and I must call my mother and god save me I am lost and that man took my wallet and I’m dead I’m going to die today and there’s nothing I can do about it and too many dollars on that one horse I ought to know better and where is my dog I’ve lost my dog and I almost cover my ears but my mother must think that nothing is wrong or she will worry but as we pass through the doors, stepping off the platform and onto the train car I hear someone’s voice. It pierces my mind more so than the others and he says kill kill I must kill and I do not know what to say but my mother does not watch my face she only stares out the dark windows at the concrete walls. But still the man yells silently and in front of my eyes there are bloody knives and axes and a revolver shoots a young woman between the eyes and a body swings from a tree and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and as the train lurches forward I think I shall be sick or perhaps I shall die from the revolver the man has in his pocket.

And then the man’s eyes turn towards me and his eyes are bright red and it burns and I want to close my eyes but I can’t and it strikes me like a punch to my stomach as he glares harder and silently shouts stay out of my head. And everything goes black.

Erik

Ruth never had strong lungs. Since she was small, if ever she got sick, the walls of her chest would tear like flower petals and she would cough up blood for weeks. Poor Ruth wilted before our eyes that winter. I never thought that someday I would grow to envy her. At first we thought it was just the house. The room was poorly heated and it was near the outer wall and the drafts came in like ghosts between shingles and walls and windowpanes. When she said her back hurt, my mother thought it was her own fault; every night she slept sitting upright in the far corner. And when she couldn’t wake and her voice wouldn’t rise above a whisper we said she wasn’t sleeping well because nobody was and she was a slight girl, nothing to worry too much about. And when she didn’t get better we still tried not to worry because to whom could we turn? The lice bit everyone and the rash was spreading everywhere, what could we do?

But it was more than lice. And we admitted this too late, once the red-haired woman two buildings away died. And she was not frail like Ruth, she helped the men chop wood until the rash left her bedridden on a cot in a tumbledown shack. Soon the snow and the rashes and the cold sweats left her body cold as the snow. And I knew that Ruth would follow her but we wouldn’t admit it even as her body shrunk smaller and smaller and her bones showed through her clothes and her skin peeled off as she tossed and turned in her corner.

Nobody would touch her. She sat alone and sometimes I would sit with her while mother waited in the lines for bread and father saw what money he could earn from this and that. And at first she would talk to me but her words grew slow and broken and stopped talking altogether one bleak morning. Mother cried and refused to move from her cot and my father disappeared for days and came back with black circles around his eyes and blood on his hands where he had punched walls and fences.

My father said we would escape that day. My mother cried, pleading that we had no plan and there was no chance, no chance at all, did he not have a wife and another child to care for?

We crept towards the fence. It was about 2 am, I would guess now, though by this time my father’s watch was long broken and lost in the move to Warsaw. We brought no lanterns, only a candle and three matches in case of an emergency. There was a far corner away to the north side of the ghetto, and the guards stayed away because the wind was the worst there in winter. And we felt it as we moved slowly up the streets, icy blasts showering our faces and tough sheets of snow crunching beneath our feet. And I could see the fence as we approached but I heard the first gunshot and grabbed my father’s arm. And as the SS guard with the black head with its emblazoned death’s head surveyed my father and then my mother and then me, I began to wish I had died of typhus with Ruthie in our tiny room at the top of the house in Warsaw.

Bang. And the guard’s lantern lit up the snow which was now splattered with my father’s blood and the bullet wound glistened like new paint, flashing in the light of the lantern.

And it came fast, my mother said please don’t shoot and the guard tilts his gun down to my mother’s height and I just stare and stare and without knowing what else to do, I twist the barrel like they do in American cartoons. I cannot tie it into a bow but the barrel crumples like a paper bag. The guard stares at me and he lurches forward to my throat but then stops and leaves us. And my mother looks at me with admiration but there is something behind her eyes. It’s fear because I have done the impossible and I have saved her. But I’ve killed us both. 


End file.
